


Gravity is Definitely Real

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, High School AU, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watching Vriska on the field is always as difficult as it is enrapturing. She moves with the easy intent of someone who has long since become a native player of the game, every step wrapped in the liquid grace of familiar motion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravity is Definitely Real

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArionWind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArionWind/gifts).



Watching Vriska on the field is always as difficult as it is enrapturing. She moves with the easy intent of someone who has long since become a native player of the game, every step wrapped in the liquid grace of familiar motion. Arms, legs, knees, even the tilt of her neck towards her ultimate goal. It is a beautiful, breathtaking thing, in the moments between the viciousness. When she catches the ball in her net, an extension of her own arm, as natural as breathing. When she launches it towards some other teammate, whose name, in full honestly, Kanaya could not remember if paid.

All of that, of course, is before she cocks out one foot and sends another girl careening into the ground.

The opponent comes up muddied and there may be blood beginning to leak from her nose, though it’s hard to tell at this distance. And then everything becomes less beautiful and instinctively elegant, and more brutal and plainly animalistic. Hands curled into claws, nails freshly cut close to the quick able to tear into cheeks and arms with ease.

Kanaya is unsure if lacrosse was quite this violent before Vriska joined the team. Certainly she seems to exist outside the rules, given the way the referees fall upon the screeching, spitting mess of players- four or five of them by now, clamoring to the aid of their teammates. Vriska is benched immediately, but her grin is smug and self satisfied. No doubt this is because two of the opposition are limping in a way that suggests they will not be finishing out the game either. Nor, quite probably, their next match.

Some arcane and unspecified amount of time is left in the game, but as with most things, Vriska’s interest stops the moment her chances to wreak havoc have been restrained, and she lopes towards the stands in a way that is distinctly predatory. But, a predator satisfied already, having been glutted on their latest meals. Lazy and unconcerned. Given that Vriska’s role, insofar as Kanaya is able to discern it, is to render assorted members of various opposing teams incapable of continuing to play, as some sort of maniacal revenge scheme when the game has already been long since lost, no one attempts to stop her. She has served her purpose, and she knows it as well as the rest of them.

So, Kanaya rises swiftly from the bleachers and swoops down to examine the bruises already forming with fretful tuts and delicate fingers. Her afternoon is going to be spent dealing with bandages and antispectics, she can already tell. If Vriska had her way of things, the injuries would be left to swell and scar abominably, the pain and ugliness a testament to her strength.

Sometimes, when she is feeling especially dreamy, Kanaya imagines Vriska would have been better suited to some sort of ancient warrior culture, clawing her way through legions of enemies at the head of great and terrible battles. She has that air about her.

But Kanaya tries very hard not to be dreamy in regards to Vriska anymore. Not for over a year now, because Vriska is an addiction, but as long as Kanaya is careful, a fairly safe vice. Something to be indulged in only sparingly.

"At least let us go to the nurse’s office? I don’t want you walking home like this." It’s a pointless question, and neither of them have turned towards the school building anyway, Vriska’s longer paces slow and easy in contrast to Kanaya’s flittering, anxious gait as they pass the edge of the field and hit the sidewalk.

"You comin’ home with me?" Another pointless question.

"Surely by now you realize I’m not going to leave you unsupervised to bleed all over your living room?" Maybe she doesn’t realize it. Maybe it hasn’t sunk in. Or maybe her ignorance is feigned, a game to win attention and affirmation. There is something desperate and hungry in Vriska, that craves the reassurance that she is worth other people’s time. Kanaya prefers not to think about that thing, either. If she dwells on it too long, she’ll begin to convince herself that it is more than she can handle.

And really, the only way Kanaya could be made to let go of Vriska, at this point, is to be persuaded into believing that sticking around will only damage her more in the long run, in ways butterfly bandages and rubbing alcohol cannot fix.

"You’re kinda slow on the uptake, huh, Kanaya?" There is laughter beneath Vriska’s words, and that immediately puts Kanaya on edge. She is not a creature of restraint, in the ways Kanaya is. If she thinks something is funny, she laughs over it, often in outrageous and cruel fashions, wringing every ounce of humour she can from a situation. More of that eerie, ravenous vacuum.

"I shouldn’t think so." She doesn’t play into the taunt, refusing to give Vriska her way. This is not the first time, and will surely not be the last, that Vriska has attempted to turn dutiful friendly overtures into something unnecessary, just to laugh at the way Kanaya sputters and blushes, brown cheeks turning an ugly mauve with anger or humiliation.

"Well, y’know what _IIIIIIII_ think?" On anyone else, the way she drawls out letters in her purposefully affected and unnecessarily thick accent would drive Kanaya mad. Language is a sacred thing, not to be warped and whittled at one’s whim. But behind Vriska’s bloodied grin and split lip, it always seems more endearing that upsetting. "I think you’re being stupid on purpose!"

She can tell that she’s playing into Vriska’s hands as she stutters to a stop, cars blazing past the busy road and sending her skirts into fluttering disarray. But that doesn’t actually keep her from wringing her hands in the curious combination of anxiety and anger that Vriska summons up in these exchanges. “I most certainly am not! What point is there in pretending to be foolish, when you are readily available to fulfill the quota for us both?”

It’s meant to be insulting, but Vriska just grins wider, and it makes Kanaya want to flinch when sees the precise moment her lip splits open again. But she fails on that front, and leans in instead, drawn in by Vriska’s gravitational pull, which is not a thing, but which she can’t help pretending exists anyway. The alternative explanations are underwhelming.

"Becaaaaaaaause," Vriska says, this time drawing it out into a singsong taunt. Kanaya gives up and let’s herself be swept up in it. There really is no fighting her, when she gets like this, high on the thrill of her bloodsport and the rush of conquer and victory. But the pause is only barely long enough for Kanaya to open her mouth, before Vriska is actually bothering to explain herself. A rare occurence indeed. "If you can pretend hard enough, you think maybe it’ll be a little less real!"

Kanaya thinks she has heard that phase before. But, her mind is failing to make the necessary connections, wrapped up in the fact that Vriska standing far closer than she was a moment ago, one hand wrapped around Kanaya’s wrist, and the other sliding over the frictionless silk of her sleeve, crawling towards her shoulder. The touch is not foreign, but it is unexpected. All the moreso in conjunction with the way Vriska is staring. It isn’t the normal taunting look, daring Kanaya to make a clever comeback and reel her friend in before someone gets hurt.

It’s the same thin smile that she wears on the field, at the moment the opponent’s foot catches on her ankle and they start pinwheeling to the ground. The same proud tilt of her chin that she uses while tormenting underclassmen on their way to and from the bus lot. And the fingers on her wrist are curled not, Kanaya realizes entirely too slowly, in a loose grip but into those dangerous claws that have been known to rip a face to shreds. It is only happenstance, good fortune, that leaves her arm ensconced inside them, rather than at their mercy.

She realizes she has not been breathing.

She realizes this because she can feel the soft brush of Vriska’s own breath over her mouth, and there is no matching motion from her own.

"Weeeeell, Kanaya?"

Vriska is a hunter, warrior, conqueror, tormentor and traitor. These are all things Kanaya knows more intimately than she wishes to. She has seen Vriska destroy the people she cares about as an extension of perceived games. She has seen Vriska lie and cheat and steal and never so much as feel a glance of regret, let alone do something as absurd as ask permission.

And yet, here they are, in the summer heat, on the sidewalk off of 274, cars rushing by in gusts of wind and smog, and Vriska is waiting for an answer.

Language is a sacred thing that is not to be warped and whittled to one’s whims, and Kanaya could not form proper words here and now even if she wanted to. All that would come out is gibberish and confusion, and she can feel the moment stretching thinner, can see the second fast approaching where it will snap apart and they will unravel back into themselves.

So rather than speak, and bring it crashing down even faster, she forces herself to edge forward, only remembering to gasp in a shaking breath finally, dizzily, after she feels the tacky cling and rough split of Vriska’s ruined lips. A shuddering inhalation through her nose that feels like a gasp doubled, tripled, multiplied eightfold.

She can feel the way Vriska smiles, feel the movement of it like an extension of herself. Everything is awareness now, the cool brush of Vriska’s fingers at her shoulder and wrist as they tighten, the easy way Vriska tips her head just so and they mouths mold together not in a chaste brush of blood and skin but in something altogether else, for which Kanaya still has no words.

And when the moment finally does break, with Vriska taking a single step back and grinning up at Kanaya like she’s won another battle, or perhaps something more akin to a prize.

"So, you comin’ home with me or what?"


End file.
